


Young Goodman Graham

by la_novatrice (fleurs_du_mol)



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Established Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter, F/M, Gothic, Homoeroticism, M/M, Moral Dilemmas, Nathaniel Hawthorne pastiche, Season/Series 03, Temptation, The Devil is a Sneaky Bastard, Walks In The Woods, Wilderness, Young Goodman Brown pastiche
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-13
Updated: 2018-05-13
Packaged: 2019-05-06 00:06:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,783
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14629878
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fleurs_du_mol/pseuds/la_novatrice
Summary: Now it was deep dusk in the woods, and darkest where they were walking. As best as he could be discerned, Will’s companion was about fifty years old, though more of a dandy than him; he bore a considerable resemblance to Will in his mannerisms. Yet he had the air of one who knew the world, one who had moved through it with tactical, calm precision like a kingmaker.





	Young Goodman Graham

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ladyswarthington](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladyswarthington/gifts).



Will Graham came out of his cabin at sunset. He put his head back after stepping over the threshold to kiss his wife, and Molly, the breeze toying with her hair, causing it to brush against his cheek softly, whispered, “You don’t have to go — put it off until morning. I’m just worried you won’t make it home.” Her lips were close to his ear. “Stay with me, dear heart.”

“I should,” replied Will, “and tonight of all nights. It’s not an errand for daylight, either.” He smiled at her. “What, after three years, you’re going to doubt me, now?”

Molly shook her head. She brushed the tendrils of hair from her face. “Then… go. I’ll be here. God willing, you’ll find all’s well when you get back.”

“God might not have as much to do with it,” said Will. He sighed. “But pray, anyway, before you go to bed. I’m sure he’ll be benevolent.” So they parted, and Will went down the steps, watching his feet until, when he was about to turn a corner into the woods, he glanced back and saw Molly peering after him with a nervous expression.

 _Poor Molly,_ he thought, because his heart fell.  _What a hypocrite I am to leave her on such a whim. She mentions her own nightmares, too. The look on her face when I said I was leaving — her eyes were troubled, like she’s dreamt about this, like she’s been warned._ He bit his lip.  _No, she’s too kind and steadfast to even think about it, that way. Well, one night. Then I’ll follow her out of the dark. Maybe God’s here, after all._

With new resolve, Will felt more justified in going quickly toward his current evil purpose. He had chosen a path only he knew; Walter hadn’t explored it, and Molly was more reticent than either Will or Walter to ever forge ahead. It was dark and dismal. Perhaps years ago it had been used by woodsman, but now, trees and overgrowth closed in around him. The effect was lonely as it could be. But Will understood solitude and wore it as protectively as an overcoat. He imagined invisible and terrible forces could witness him through the multitude of trunks, and that his quiet footsteps still marked him as he creeped along the path.

“Ghosts,” said Will to himself, reluctant to rest his eyes too long on any single thing, “Or the Devil himself.”

His head tilted toward the ground, he passed a crook of the path and entered an old crossroads, disused for years. Looking forward again, he witnessed the figure of a man, in rich and impeccable attire, seated at the base of an enormous tree. He stood at Will’s approach and strode onward side by side with him.

“You’re late, Will Graham,” he said. “I heard an old church tower chiming as I came through to the crossroads, and that was over fifteen minutes ago.”

“Molly kept me back a while,” replied Will, with a tremble in his voice due to the abrupt appearance of his fellow-traveller. Still, it wasn’t wholly unexpected.  

Now it was deep dusk in the woods, and darkest where they were walking. As best as he could be discerned, Will’s companion was about fifty years old, though more of a dandy than him; he bore a considerable resemblance to Will in his mannerisms. Yet he had the air of one who knew the world, one who had moved through it with tactical, calm precision like a kingmaker. Despite his clothes being immaculate, their autumnal tones matching soil and sky, the truly remarkable thing about him was his staff. It was carved to resemble a formidable black snake, and was so finely made that Will almost believed the snake writhed. That must have been a trick of the light, an illusion bred of shadows.

“Come along, Will,” said his companion. “This is a dull place to begin our journey. Take my staff, if you are so weary.”

“Believe me when I call you ‘friend,’” said Will, coming to a full stop, “But I kept our agreement by meeting you here, and now I intend to return home. I’ve got scruples regarding… well, everything you’ve proposed.”  

“Truly?” he replied with a serpent’s smile. “Let’s walk on, anyway, reasoning as we go, and if I can’t convince you, you may turn back. We are only a little way in the woods yet.”

“Too far for me,” muttered Will, unconsciously resuming his footsteps. “My father never went into he forest like this… nor his father before him.” He smirked ruefully. “They’d have beaten me. Good Catholics. Honest men. I’d be the first Graham to ever take this path and keep…”

“Such company, you were going to say?” mused his companion, interpreting Will’s pause. “Well, I’m sure your family keeps more skeletons in their closet than they ever mentioned to you, if it’s not too harsh of me to say. They projected their goodness and their honesty, but all men are capable of deception. You just said so, yourself; what good and honest man beats his own kin? I would rather have a pleasant walk along  _this_  path with you and return merrily after midnight, than ever walk the paths of their choosing.”

“They never spoke about it the way you do. It was unacceptable in the context of their upbringing, so it became unacceptable in the context of mine.” Will met his fellow-traveller’s eyes. “Your judgement — anyone’s judgement but God’s — wouldn’t have driven them to change. They called themselves people of prayer, and would never have abided your wickedness.”  

“Whether I am wicked or not,” he said, fingering his intricate staff, “Wickedness can have a very general acquaintance with everyone — everyone you hold dear, even. What makes  _me_  more insidious than the slaughterhouse worker, the deacon who manipulates his flock, the politician who embezzles public funds? Wickedness is only so when someone names it.”

“You’re deflecting,” said Will, with an amazed stare at his unperturbed companion. “I’m not tying to make any sweeping moral pronouncements. But, if I were to go on with you, how would I meet anyone’s eyes before I left? Jack’s? Alana’s? I’d feel… shame. I would be… awash with it.”

Until now the elder traveller had listened with gravitas, but he burst into laughter, chuckling with such mirth that the snake-like staff seemed to wriggle, again. Once he composed himself, he said, “Your naivety is charming, Will, but try not to amuse me too much — this is a very serious conversation and I don’t wish to be impolite.”

“Well, then,” said Will, waspishly, “there  _is_ Molly. It would break her heart, and I’d rather break my own.” He added, “But you already did that.”

“If that is the case, go your own way. I would hurt twenty old women like the one hobbling toward us to keep dear Molly from coming to any harm.”

While he spoke he pointed his staff at a figure on the path. Will recognized his grandmother, an upstanding and sweet woman who had taught him about God and the Devil and the Saints in his childhood.

“How strange that she’d be in the wilderness this late,” he murmured. “Part of my love of being outside comes from her, but this isn’t the right time.” He was overcome with guilt. “If you don’t mind, let’s take a different cut through the woods. She might be concerned about us  _consorting_.”

“As you wish,” said his fellow-traveller. “You can take to the woods, and I’ll stay on the path.”

Will turned aside, but made sure to watch his companion. Hidden by the trees, he saw him walk softly along the road until he came within an arm’s length of the woman. She, to her credit, was going at an impressive rate for her age, mumbling something under her breath, a prayer, a plea, as she advanced. The traveller casually held out his staff and grazed her wrinkled, tanned neck with the edge of the snake’s tail.

“The Devil!” she said.

“Then Elodie Graham knows her old friend,” said Will’s companion, with a pleased, closed-lipped smile, leaning on his monstrous stick.

“Yes, but is it really you?” said Elodie. She came closer to him. “And so it is, though wearing a different suit, far more fitting for the north than any bayou. But — would Your Worship believe, my sigils and philters were all stolen, and that happened while I was anointed in the manner you told me.”

“In blood gone black under the full moon?” he asked.

“Taken from my own veins,” she said, nodding. Then she appeared to become eager. “But they tell me there is a young man about to take the holy orders in the morning, and I was set to join his bed and send him off in his new life. Now Your Worship can offer me your arm and we shall be there in a moment.”

He answered, “I can’t spare you my arm, tonight. But take my staff.”

As he said it, he dropped it at her feet. Will watched all of this with both fascination and disgust, and when he blinked, his grandmother and the stick had disappeared. His eyes fell on his fellow-traveller, alone, placid and waiting for him as though nothing at all had happened.

“That was my grandmother,” said Will. His words were laden with emotion.

They continued onward, and Will’s companion spoke so eloquently, so passionately, that his words seemed channelled from another realm, a world corresponding with the physical, but mired with otherworldly beauty and terror. As they walked, he picked up a newly fallen bois d’arc branch; the moment he began to strip it of its leaves and inedible fruits, they withered and dried as the glittering evening dew evanesced under his long fingers.

Suddenly, in a dark hollow next to the road, Will sat on a wide tree stump and wouldn’t go any further. “My mind is made up,” he said, “I’m not taking another step. Even if my grandmother chose to go to the Devil instead of where I thought she’d go, that’s no reason for me to make the same mistake. I shouldn’t quit Molly or my son.” He looked up at his companion, searching his eyes.

“You’ll think better of it, as time goes on,” he said, “Sit and rest; when you feel like starting again, here is my staff to help you along.”

Without elaborating, he threw Will the bois d’arc stick, then had melted into the increasing gloom. Will sat by the roadside, trying to find solace in his decision, thinking now how easy it would be to return to Molly and look her in the face, how sweet it would be to spend the night in their bed. His conscience was clearer than ever; he had passed the test. Sleep would be his, tonight, with nothing to trouble it. Interrupting these light thoughts, there came the sound of steps that were neither his nor his companion’s, and he felt it would be best to hide within the edge of the woods. He knew the purpose for his walk was unsavory, even though he’d turned from it.

Two women’s voices came to his ears, and he realized he was listening to Alana Bloom and Bedelia Du Maurier. They were within a few yards of his hiding place, but largely invisible in the dank gloom, obscured by branches and shrubs, barely illuminated by the dying light. Their bodies brushed the twigs and leaves, but it would have been impossible for either of them to notice Will, adept as he was at lying in wait in the woods. He thought it was Bedelia who tarried nearest to him; she said to Alana, “Of the two, if I may be frank, Dr. Bloom, I’d still rather miss one of his dinners than one of these meetings. They tell me this one shall be quite intimate. There is a new woman to be taken into our communion.”

“I still don’t know how I feel about it,” said Alana. “Of course, you’ve had the lion’s share of both dinner  _and_ communion.” She paused. “If there’s a difference. I feel like one leads to the other, but they can nearly be interchanged.”

“I think he’d agree with you,” Bedelia replied. “Come — we shouldn’t be late.”

They began walking again, and their conversation, which floated so oddly on the evening air, passed through the forest. Where could they be going in this wildness? Will rested the palm of his hand on a tree, rising and looking after them, then turning his face to the sky, doubting everything his grandmother had ever said about Heaven or Hell. But there was blue above him, the stars beginning to glimmer like gemstones set out on velvet by a jeweler.

Without any natural wind to propel it, Will stared as a large, dark cloud passed northward, a distinct entity traveling on its own. It seemed to carry a multitude of voices, none of which he could quite distinguish from the others. They must have been coming from his sphere on the ground, but the cloud itself seemed to convey them. As he strained to hear, walking under the preternatural shadow, they swirled out like slow smoke. He felt, then, that they were people he knew, among them Alana and Bedelia. The next instant, they were indistinct, again; he wondered whether he mistook sounds of nature for human ones. Then came  _another_  affirmation that they  _were_  familiar: a few steps more, and the voices of his waking hours permeated the night.

There was one above others that frightened him; a woman’s tone he knew intimately, more apprehensive than the rest, still urged on by all her unseen peers. “Molly,” said Will, and it was so soft and broken that the leaves carried it as their own, echoed it through the path. He cleared his throat. “Molly!” He waited, but his only response was a scream, followed by the invisible, gathered crowd’s babbles and laughter as the cloud dissipated, leaving just the clear sky. There was no trace of Molly, or of anyone, but he knew what he had heard. He repeated what his companion had said earlier, saying, “Wickedness is only so when someone names it.”

As he spoke, he clenched his staff, and went at the fastest pace he had managed yet, coming forth from the trees and reclaiming the path against the wind. It grew wilder as he progressed, branches and thorns flecking his face or stymying his feet. He rushed forward as though in a trance, compelled, disregarding fear and anger, driven by the instinctive pull toward his fellow-traveller. The forest was dense with sounds, night birds sharp against the creaking of trees. Somewhere close, there was the stag breathing, huffing, his old friend — or his old fetch. But Will was the most horrific of things in the wilderness, now, and refused to shrink from his fellow horrors.

Angry, he shouted, “You can’t frighten me. Here comes Will Graham, and you may as well be as afraid of him as he was of you!”

He was accustomed enough to hauntings and chaos; he ran through the forest among tall pines and old maples, clutching the staff tighter than he’d ever held his gun, using it to bludgeon his way through foliage in a frenzy. He found he was laughing, manic, the echoes bled together to sound like a chorus of demons. Without thought, he carried on madly, until, showing through the trees and the shrubs, there was orange light ahead of him. He inhaled deeply and smelled pitch, ash, and embers; the scent nearly glowed in his nostrils as the sight did before his eyes. The inward storm that had driven him lulled, and he stopped to hear the same swell of voices as those borne by the cloud. It was painfully mundane and bizarrely out of place all at once.

When he felt ready, he crept forward until his eyes adjusted to the new light. At one end of a vast, open clearing, there was a natural formation of rocks that stood almost as an altar; around these, four trees were set ablaze. The flames had engulfed low shrubs that grew along the rocks, their leaves and vines were curling red and white. The illumination was similar to a bonfire’s: fitful, grabbing at the sky. The field was full of people he’d known throughout his life; some better than others. They held varying importance to him, and since few were important, he imagined he took the scene less acutely than someone whose faith in everyone was stronger. Jack Crawford was there, despite clinging to his ideas of right and wrong, as were Miriam Lass and Beverley Katz; Alana, whose presence with Margot Verger didn’t surprise him; Frederick Chilton, whose very resolve to be present  _was_  surprising. Mason Verger rubbed shoulders with Georgia Madchen; Freddie Lounds lingered near Garrett Jacob Hobbs. Abigail stood by the altar, close to the fire, her long hair streaming across her shoulders.

 _Where is Molly?_ thought Will, and for a moment, his hope was shining. He couldn’t see her among the many faces, and her voice was — if she was there — silent. It was impossible to tell if the crowd was singing, chanting, or murmuring; their assembled noise was closest to an incantation, a low din that wove through the forest to bloom in the clearing. There seemed to be a crescendo that Will was deaf to: the flames of the four trees blazed higher, smoke mingling to form leering faces and humanoid shapes; at the same time, the fire on the rock sprung up to form a thick, red arch above the altar. Then a figure appeared: the same dapper traveller who had accompanied Will in the woods. He carried himself like a priest, with solemnity and control.

“Bring forth the converts!” called a voice that rang through the field and drifted into the thickets.

At the words, Will stepped forward from the shadows and glanced disdainfully at the congregation, trying to veil the kinship he felt with them. He would have sworn his grandfather formed in the smoke, gazing down from the dust and shadows, to beckon him forward. Another man, his uncle, whom he had always been fond of, seemed to appear, too, his wavering features set with sadness — gestured Will back. But he had no autonomy to listen; his eyes were fixed on the man at the altar as he came closer. His heart drove him forward. He didn’t need Bedelia’s hand on his arm to coax him; his own instinct for the dark beguiled him. To his left, Abigail guided a veiled woman forward, too, until she and Will alone were under the canopy of fire.

“Welcome, both of you,” said the fellow-traveller in his quiet voice, “to the communion of humanity. It’s both your inclination, and your destiny. Now look behind you.”

Will couldn’t resist; they turned, and through the roiling, hot air from the flames, every face was more visible and more savage, and all had sharp smiles of welcome.

“Here,” resumed the fellow-traveller, “is everyone you have reverenced from youth, rightly or wrongly.” He smiled to himself. “You said they were worse, or better, than yourselves, and always you shied away from your own natures, contrasting them with what ‘ought’ to be and what ‘should’ be, making moral platitudes and judgements. Yet here they all are before me. This night you shall know their secrets: the wanton liaisons” — Will blushed, and was glad for the ruddy firelight — “The covetousness, the violence, the rage, the lustful…” he paused before saying, as though enjoying a private joke, “the epicurean. Your hearts know where these transgressions are best committed, where these secrets are best created.” He glanced at Will, the fire captured in his eyes, turning them the deep hue of a red Bordeaux. “The earth is one lingering blood spot, one petit mort after another. This is your birth right. You’ve more capacity than you can possibly imagine to make manifest these deeds — deeds frowned upon by civilized society, yet so embraced by it. And now, look upon each other.”

They did so, and by the blaze of those infernal torches, Will thought Molly had never looked more beautiful. Molly trembled, but her lips were parted out of anticipation as they stood before the unhallowed altar.

“Here you stand,” Will’s fellow-traveller said, and he sounded almost solemn and contemplative. “Depending on your own hearts, you still may have hoped that virtue and goodness were not dreams. That they were constructs with more power.” He swallowed. “But now you see me, and you see yourselves. What you call wickedness is just another happiness, a solace, natural as tides and blooming roses. Welcome to your new self-knowledge.” He looked at Will less fleetingly. “Your new communion.”

“Welcome,” repeated the multitude, in tones of triumph and solemnity.

And there Will stood with Molly. They were, it seemed, the only pair who hesitated on this edge of wickedness. Then, in an epiphany that had only taken long to surface as words, not feelings, Will understood Molly hesitated, but he did not.

A basin was formed in the rock, perhaps hollowed out by the passage of water and rain over time. Did it contain water made orange and gleaming by the light? Was it blood, whose surface was slick and shining? Or flame rendered into liquid? Herein his fellow-traveller dipped his hand and prepared to mark their foreheads — they could then partake in the mystery of sin, more awake, more aware, absolved of taboos. Will cast one look at Molly, gone pale, and he knew that she knew he intended to be baptized.

“Molly,” he said. “Just resist him; he won’t force you. It’s not his way.”

He didn’t know if she listened; he reached for his companion’s anointed hand and presented his forehead, closing his eyes in the greatest of ecstasies, relishing the resolution. His fellow-traveller drew some esoteric mark upon him, slowly, carefully. Hardly had he borne this when he found himself among gentle night and complete solitude, hearing a roar of wind and fire die and give way to silence. Will stumbled against the rock, and noted it was slick and damp. A dangling twig that had been completely aflame sprinkled his upper lip with chilled dew.

The next morning Will Graham came slowly to in his bed. Molly, who always slept heavily, was sleeping peacefully at his side. He didn’t have a satisfactory answer as to why his feet were caked with dirt, or twigs and leaves were stuck in his curls.


End file.
